Biography

American author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays.

In 1949, during a tour with the United States Navy, he eloped with the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle, a childhood friend. The couple's first child, a daughter, was born in 1950. After Mathews graduated in 1952 with a B.A. in music, the family moved to Europe; a second child, their son Phillip, was born in 1955. Mathews and de Saint Phalle separated in 1960. He is currently married to the writer Marie Chaix.

Together with John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, Mathews founded and edited the short-lived but influential literary journal Locus Solus (named after a novel by Raymond Roussel, from 1961 to 1962.

Source Notes

Sy Scholfield quotes him in "Contemporary Authors Autobiographical Series - Volume 6" edited by Adele Sarkissian (Gale, 1987), p. 223: "I was born in New York on the Upper East Side at 2:40 a.m. on February 14, 1930." Same data in "The way home: selected longer prose" by Harry Mathews [1988] (Atlas Press, 1999), p. 153.